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Christmas in July Stocking Making

It’s time again for another Christmas in July stocking drive for Warmth for Warriors. We are once again making mini Christmas stockings for the troops and sending them in to be filled with little items for Christmas gifts for our soldiers through Warmth for Warriors (W4W).

Each year the miniature stockings are filled at W4W Headquarters with soaps, toiletries, and candies for our troops for Christmas. The little stockings filled with treats are a wonderful way to say thank you to our troops and give them a little Christmas cheer during the holidays. We also need donations of the little hotel sized soaps, shampoos, chapsticks and other small items for stuffing the stockings.

Good Things Together over at Ravelry is hosting the special Christmas in July event. More details including how you can participate and win a prize can be found here.

You can crochet, knit, sew, weave, or loom any Christmas stocking for our troops. We try and aim for the Christmas stockings to be about 6 inches in length. But a little bigger or smaller is fine too. Here is a link to some free patterns should you need some project ideas for making stockings. Be aware that our deadline this year for arrival at W4W headquarters is

Latest Round Ripple Blanket

Here is my latest round ripple blanket that I have been working on. I was lucky enough to get a few more brown skeins of yarn donated to me so I could finish it up. There are no stores anymore in my immediate area that sell yarn. The local senior center that donates yarn to me was shut down for months so I wasn’t able to get any yarn from them either. Last week they opened back up and I was so excited to go in and obtain yarn from them to finish this blanket.

Finished size is 52 inch wide. This blanket will be donated back to the senior center for their Veterans Outreach Program. Hopefully some Vet will enjoy the blanket and find comfort in using this blanket crocheted with lots of love.

Ridged Hat Pattern

These last few weeks, I have been busy crocheting more hats for the Warmth for Warriors annual hat drive. These hats were crocheted using the free Red Heart Ridged Hat Pattern. I first saw this hat on a Red Heart yarn wrapper and really liked the look of the crocheted cables on the hat.

I have crocheted this pattern using a I hook and also a J hook. Both times the hat is too short without having to add some additional rows to get the desired length I need for a men’s hat size.
I have found that if I add 3 extra rows in the middle I am at about 7.25” long in length. Then I crochet rows 14-17 (4 rows) for the trim rows. Length is about 8.5” long and fits nicely.

Here is one more hat I crocheted using the pattern and added some camo type yarn for stripes.

Recycled Seahawks Tote Bag

I have had lots of time on my hands lately to crochet with all the stay-at-home orders. I thought it was time to break into my huge stash of plastic bags and crochet a new recycled plastic tote bag. This bag was crocheted using mainly white plastic retail bags made into plarn and I added blue and green yarn to give it a Seattle Seahawks color theme.

This tote bag was crocheted using my free ultimate recycled bag pattern. I added stripes using regular yarn by doing 3 blue HDC (half double crochet stitch) rows, 3 green HDC and then 3 more blue HDC rows along with plastic bag yarn to crochet this bag.

Finished size is 12″ wide by 13″ long with 7″ handles. I think it would make a nice book bag so I may donate it to the next library fundraiser. So in honor of my beloved Seahawks,

Cast Iron Handle Cover

My little No. 6 cast iron skillet needed a new handle cover. I made the other one several years ago and after time, the covers do fray and need to be replaced. I love crocheting my own homemade handle covers using recycled t-shirt material. I cut the old t-shirts in thin strips and create what I like to call t-yarn. The t-yarn makes great handle covers, potholders, and trivets. You can find my t-yarn making tutorial here.

I cut my t-shirt yarn very thin for this project. It’s about 1/4 inch wide and gently stretched to curl the “yarn” which makes it smoother to crochet. Here is the link to the free t-shirt yarn skillet cover pattern.

I crocheted this handle cover for a total of 12 rows using an I crochet hook. This is a bit smaller than the original pattern because